


Sleepwalk

by Lothiriel84



Series: Dancing With Tears In My Eyes [1]
Category: MarsCorp (Podcast)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Tried, Series Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 09:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10761786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothiriel84/pseuds/Lothiriel84
Summary: Rolling and falling, I'm choking and callingName after name after name





	Sleepwalk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolfsmilch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfsmilch/gifts).



Stupid, stupid David. For the first time in his life he’d allowed himself to believe that maybe, just maybe, things were going to be all right – and look how spectacularly wrong he’d been proved in a matter of seconds. Over the last few months he’d started to think of his cupboard as his own safe space, dark and silent and separated from the rest of the base; of course the man he loved and hated in equal parts had to choose that exact same place for his melodramatic return, and now he simply couldn’t bear the thought of being in there, even the air he was breathing a painful reminder of Colin’s presence.

(The universe clearly hated him for some reason, and he couldn’t honestly blame it for that. He’d always known that this was going to be a disaster, he’d just refused to admit as much even to himself.)

He swallowed down a somewhat hysterical bout of laughter that sounded suspiciously like crying, fled the cupboard as if it was on fire. He needed somewhere else to stay for tonight; any secluded area of moderately clean floor would do, so long as he wasn’t forced to make small talk, or explain the reasons for his sudden change of heart.

In the end he found himself tucked under the desk inside Miss Hob’s quarters with no clear recollection of how he got in there. He’d memorized the code to the door the first time he’d seen her enter it; he hadn’t done it on purpose, he’d just been standing there, and there were some things he couldn’t help but notice, no matter how hard he tried to ignore them.

(His brain would be a much quieter place if only he could turn off the way it focused on the tiniest of details, every one of them, all the time. When he closed his eyes at night he always pictured the ceiling of the yoga room that had been his prison for over ten years; he could remember how the light hit every corner of the room, revealing the smallest imperfections down to the specks of dust, and he absolutely hated it.) 

He was going to let everyone down all over again, he realised all of a sudden, and he curled himself into a ball, hoping he could just dissolve into the single molecules and atoms that made up his body. Miss Hob had been the first – and only one – to believe in him, and now he was going to prove her wrong because he was too weak to do anything about it.

Weak, he’d been so weak, ever since he could remember; he’d never been able to stand up for himself with his own parents, even less so when Colin had come into the picture. Colin Denham had been everything he’d ever dreamed he wanted to be, and so much more than that; back then he’d been an impressionable teenager with very little experience and no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, it had been so incredibly easy for the former head of the science department to have him wrapped around his little finger.

(Colin had told him he loved him, once, and he’d been so foolish as to believe him. Such a blatant miscalculation on his part warranted in itself every second of the punishment he’d received, and he genuinely didn’t blame his fellow Martians for branding him as a freak and a public enemy. Stupid, silly David.)

Something touched his knee, and he jumped, knocking his head against the underside of the desk. He was only vaguely aware of someone calling his name, blindly clung onto the arms that reached for his body. Deep breaths, David, he repeated to himself, over and over in his brain until he became once more aware of his surroundings.

“David, can you hear me? I’m going to take you to the medical department, straight away.”

Slowly, painfully, he made eye contact, shook his head in protest. “Please. I’m fine, fine, I’m perfectly fine.”

Miss Hob gave a short laugh, bitter and disbelieving. “Of course you are. I’m not even going to ask why you are here in the first place.”

“Colin,” he stated, flatly, as if that explained everything. “He – he’s back, I – I can’t. Not again.”

He waited for harsh words that never came, belatedly realised how his arms had found their way around her waist. He thought of his mother, who used to hold him like that, before he went on and destroyed everything his parents had worked so hard for.

(They had never visited him while he was locked away in his little cell, and now they were both dead. He was all alone, and he wished Colin had never decided to come back for him a decade too late, never shared his insane plans for world domination with him at his side.)

“To hell with Colin,” she told him with conviction, and that startled him into something close to genuine laughter; he burrowed his face against her shoulder, breathed in the scent that was unique to her even after all the time she’d spent on Mars, and finally allowed his tears to fall freely. 


End file.
